For thus saith the Lord God; Behold,
I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. (Ezekiel 34:11)
This He does at the first when His elect are like wandering
sheep that know not the Shepherd or the fold. How wonderfully doth the Lord
find out His chosen! Jesus is great as a seeking Shepherd as well as a saving
Shepherd. Though many of those His Father gave Him have gone as near to
hell-gate as they well can, yet the Lord by searching and seeking discovers
them and draws nigh to them in grace. He has sought out us: let us have good
hope for those who are laid upon our hearts in prayer, for He will find them
out also.
The Lord repeats this process when any of His flock stray
from the pastures of truth and holiness. They may fall into gross error, sad
sin, and grievous hardness; but yet the Lord, who has become a surety for them
to His Father, will not suffer one of them to go so far as to perish. He will
by providence and grace pursue them into foreign lands, into abodes of poverty,
into dens of obscurity, into depths of despair; He will not lose one of all
that the Father has given Him. It is a point of honor with Jesus to seek and to
save all the flock, without a single exception. What a promise to plead, if at
this hour I am compelled to cry, "I have gone astray like a lost
sheep!"
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